Below is the transcript of the above interview that originally ran over the KALX airwaves on May 8, 2025.
DJ Seagull: So today I’m here with Dean Wareham from so many bands from Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean and Britta, and who has just released a solo album. And you’ve been touring that album, right?
Dean Wareham: Yes. We just got back from, uh, a month in Europe. It was, uh, a lot of shows and not many days off. It was grueling, but it was fun.It’s fun a nd then it’s exhausting too, but. We survived.
DJ Seagull: And you’re doing another like similar length tour in the US now too, right?
Dean Wareham: Yeah. We’re, we’re breaking it up a little bit, so it’ll be, it’ll be easier than that, than that one was. Less grueling. Yeah, we’re doing the West coast in May, and then we’re doing like, um, East Coast and Midwest in June. Not doing the South, and people are asking, why do you hate the, the southern states? I, I don’t, it just worked out that way.
DJ Seagull: And is your touring band, like, do you have different touring bands for different legs of the tour or anything? Or is it all the same people?
Dean Wareham: It’s going to change to the East Coast, but for the, for the West Coast, it’s the same.
It’s the same that I just toured Europe with, which is, uh, myself and then Brita on bass. Roger Brogan on drums. He’s been playing with us for a long time. He played on, on the record and on the, my last record. And we had a neighbor of ours here in LA named Matt Papieluch, who plays in a band called Big Search.I don’t know if you know them. And he used to play with Cass McCombs and Paper Cuts.
DJ Seagull: Mm-hmm.
Dean Wareham: He was great.
DJ Seagull: When you tour, do you like ever think about like you choose like which bands you wanna tour with? ’cause you have so many bands, like you have Luna and you have Dean and Britta, and then you have your solo stuff.
Dean Wareham: Well, we are gonna do some Dean and Britta shows. Actually we’re going back to England doing some, trying some shows just as a, as a duo. But, um, I guess ’cause I have a new album out, it made sense as Dean Wareham and Band. And then, uh, Luna is a whole other thing.
DJ Seagull: Yeah. I figured like that would be more planning and stuff. You have to coordinate with more people.
Dean Wareham: Yes, we’re scattered all over the place and we might tour again next, next year. We’ll see.
DJ Seagull: So that’s something we can look forward to? U.S. tour?
Dean Wareham: Yes.
DJ Seagull: And will you go to the south on that one?
Dean Wareham: I mean, usually we do like Atlanta. And Chapel Hill. Uh, we don’t usually go to Florida.
It’s been a long time since we’ve been in Florida. We did play Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham, I guess they say down there Birmingham. In England, it’s Birmingham, and my name is Wareham. Which you got correct.
DJ Seagull: I looked at the interview, so I was like, how do people usually like pronounce it if they pronounce it?
Dean Wareham: Oh, some people say… it depends. If I’m at the DMV and they might call out, uh, Mr. War. In Spain, Raham.
DJ Seagull: Interesting. Well, people do that with Berkeley too sometimes. Uh, especially the English bands will call it Barkley.
Dean Wareham: Oh yeah, yeah. Barkley.
DJ Seagull: And like, when you do set lists for your solo tours, how do you like pull from your, ’cause you have such an extensive back catalog.
Dean Wareham: Well, I’ve been doing a set, it’s coming out and playing like six new songs in a row. And I can see it kind of tests people’s patients a little. I don’t know thhis one, I don’t know this one, I don’t know this one,,,And then, um, after we do that, then we play some of my earlier solo stuff or. We did a lot of Galaxie 500 songs on that last tour. Couple of Luna songs too.
DJ Seagull : Are you gonna plan on doing like this, a similar set list on the US leg of the tour you’re doing? Are you changing them? And this is more of a fan question, but why don’t you play Super Freaky Memories more on your tours? Can you please play Super Freaky Memories in San Francisco?
Dean Wareham: Okay, I’ll make a note. We kind of, we did, we did practice it a little bit. Mm-hmm. And then when, then we were like, we’re thinking we’d play it on tour and then we never did. But, um mm-hmm. All right. I’ll make a note to myself. Freaky Memories, request for that. Except in Spain, people in Spain, people like it. It was sort of like a, I don’t wanna say it was a hit ’cause I’ve never had a hit, but it was, it, it was, uh, it was popular in Spain. It was a single.
DJ Seagull: yeah. ’cause you say in your book the album was kind of a dud, but I think there’s some gems on it.
Dean Wareham: I think. Yeah. There’s some nice stuff on there. And, um, sometimes we’re not, we’re not the best judge of, of, uh, of our records and or you can’t tell till like 10 years have gone by. Then you go back and listen to it and you’re like,
DJ Seagull: and you said you’ve never had a hit. I mean, I feel like those three Galaxy 500 albums qualify, at least in the indie world as a hit.
Dean Wareham: Yes. There, we had hits at, at college radio.
DJ Seagull: Yeah. But that’s all that really matters, right?
Dean Wareham: Yeah, it’s true. No, it’s not true. No, it depends. Yeah. Some people have hits that buy them houses. And so that’s not that kind of hit. Yeah, that’s obviously, there’s some songs that have lasted a long time mm-hmm. That people are still listening to, so that’s pretty amazing and I’m thankful for that.
DJ Seagull: And you, we were talking about your touring a few years ago, Luna Tour, and I saw them and there was like a family that was following your tour around. Do you remember that?
Dean Wareham: That, was it a family? You mean with children? No. Yeah,
DJ Seagull: they had like a kid and they were following the tour. Did you feel like the Grateful Dead?
Dean Wareham: Uh, on a, on a much smaller scale, we do have some fans who will come. We have a few Swedish fans who fly to San Francisco to see us still. Oh my gosh. And, uh, there is, yeah, there’s a sort of a group that go to a lot of shows. You know, it’s to see us, but also to see each other. I think kind of a fun thing to do, plan your travels or plan your vacation around and go see the band.
DJ Seagull: Is there a band that you would, you would plan a vacation around seeing?
Dean Wareham: Um, well, I don’t have to ’cause I live here in, in Los Angeles. Yeah. See,
DJ Seagull: everyone comes there anyway.
Dean Wareham: Yeah. So it’s more like if you live in some far-flung place where, where the people don’t come.
DJ Seagull: Last year you released an album with Sonic Boom, right?
Dean Wareham: Yes. Uh, a holiday album of Christmas cheer. Yeah. Dean and Britta and Sonic Boom.
Britta and I recorded most of that here at, at home over the years and, uh, when we mixed it at, uh, at Sonic Boom’s Studio in Portugal. It turned out really great. It’s quite, it’s quite lovely and uh, we hope that people listen to it every year.
DJ Seagull: This is your first album that you’ve actually made together? ’cause he’s produced for you before, right?
Dean Wareham: Yeah, he’s really done. Like he did, uh, he did a, an EP of remixes after the first Dean and Britta record. He remixed five songs, which was really kind, it was really cool. He took this tracks that we recorded and kind of stripped out the drums and just put drones through them and it was, it was really nice.
Yeah. It’s the, but it’s the first full album we’ve done together. Yeah.
DJ Seagull: And this has all been like fairly recently, these collaborations, but like you’ve known each other for a long time and you were a big fan of Space Men Three. So like what is it like to finally like work together?
Dean Wareham: Well, you learn from everyone you, you work with and it’s so, it’s fun watching him work.
He is a strange kind of genius. He’s just very like focused. It’s just like, his own world of like synthesizer sounds and tremolos and delays and. Amazing to watch him work. What’s great about, about Sonic Boom is he’s, uh, just constantly pushing himself and reinventing himself. He’s not just like making the same record over and over again. And while he doesn’t make a lot of records, actually, I mean, he’s, he produces stuff, but he hasn’t made a lot of solo albums. He’s not repeating himself. And I think he gets a lot of, a lot of psych bands like call him like, Hey, we wanna work with you. And he is like, well, he wants to, to do something different. I don’t know. I mean, listen to the record he did with Panda Bear. It’s really. There’s nothing else like it. So if you can do that, that’s an achievement to make a record that’s unique.
DJ Seagull: And he, like, he may might not make that many records, but every record he like makes, you know, it’s like, like real big. And you’re talking about like reinventing yourself recently and DJ Rare Earth was kind enough to share the interview that he did recently with Naomi Yang and she was talking about like how she wouldn’t wanna reform Galaxie 500 because she’s feels like, um, she’s moved past that style. Like she’s kind of reinvented like what kind of music she makes. Do you feel the same kind of way about that?
Dean Wareham: I don’t know. I guess, I mean, looking at the songs on the new record that’s, this chord structures are probably more complex than I did with Galaxie 500. Mm-hmm. But my playing style, isn’t that me? My, my voice on guitar is not that different. It’s kinda the same. This voice, this one that I’m using right now. Well, I guess it’s a bit lower than it was, but I can still, I can still sing those songs. I can still hit the high notes for now. Um, and I enjoy doing them.
DJ Seagull: She said that sometimes when she sings the Galaxy 500 songs, it feels like a karaoke version. And so you don’t think that though?
Dean Wareham: No, I don’t. But you know, I, I guess I sang.
DJ Seagull : Yeah.
Dean Wareham: Well, she only sang a couple of songs in, in Galaxy 500, so I don’t know if. Maybe that would feel more like karaoke if she’s singing my, I don’t, I don’t know what she was doing.
DJ Seagull: You’ve never gone to see them?
Dean Wareham: I have not been to see them live. No. We get along, we get along fine on, on email and, um, with her this morning about ordering some t-shirts.
DJ Seagull: Oh, for like, for the Galaxie 500. ’cause you’ve been like reissuing stuff.
Dean Wareham: Just ’cause we always make t-shirts and Oh, there’s that too. We always have to talk about the, about the records. About the records, yes.
DJ Seagull: The new releases.
Dean Wareham: Yes.
DJ Seagull: So no like Oasis type reunion tour?
Dean Wareham: No, I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I don’t think they’ll, um, gee, the kind of money that Oasis gets
DJ Seagull: it’d be like the Oasis reunion of the indie world!
Dean Wareham: So the Oasis reunion, when you look at it, you say it’s an Oasis reunion, I guess it’s a reunion of the brothers.
DJ Seagull: Yeah.
Dean Wareham: They loathe each other in the way that only brothers can. But then at the other band members, I, I don’t even know who else is in Oasis.
DJ Seagull: Like, uh, Andy Bell from Ride
Dean Wareham: Andy. Well, we’ll see how long that reunion lasts. You know, Van Halen, when they got the, they didn’t last long when they brought David Lee Roth back, did they?
DJ Seagull: did he still do like the, did he still like, jump around and do like splits in the air and stuff?
Dean Wareham: I didn’t go see them.
DJ Seagull: No?
Dean Wareham: I was not a big band Van Halen fan, but I like Jump. I like that song. I know, I know. Out here in, in California, I know a lot of people are like, oh, Van Halen. They were like a punk band. I’m like, no, I don’t think so. But uh, that’s okay. They were your punk if you like it, but I don’t.
DJ Seagull: And your new album, Kramer produced it. How was it like just you two rather than like him working with like you and a band?
Dean Wareham: Uh, yeah. It was great. It was, it was great. We spent six days in the studio. We worked super quickly and, um, he’s got, he is got like a vision for the song very quickly and he is just. He doesn’t like to sit around and waste time and argue about things like some producers do. There’s this joke: How many producers does it take to screw in a light bulb? I don’t know. What do you think? He is not like that. It’s Decisions. Decisions. Let’s move on. And he’s an, he is a great musician, so he played, he played on a lot of the tracks. The piano, Celeste, or the Moog solo, or the tipple, which is like a little string instrument.
So we did the six days and then we left the studio. And then, um, I had to wait a while for him to send in the send in the mixes, but uh, they were very exciting.
DJ Seagull: And you do, uh, a Nico cover in German on that one?
Dean Wareham: In Deutsch, yeah
DJ Seagull: You speak German?
Dean Wareham: Yeah, I can somewhat, I do speak German somewhat, yes. Mm-hmm. I wouldn’t call myself fluent, but I, I took German in high school. I took some in college. I lived in Germany for a year in 1986, so I speak some German enough to get by.
DJ Seagull: Does anyone ever, when you do covers, ’cause you do a lot of covers in other languages, like do they ever correct you?
Dean Wareham: My pronunciation in German is actually really good, so Um, if I had to do like French, my French, my accent is pretty terrible. Bonnie and Clyde have sung the song so many times. Good. Do you speak French? And I’m like, no.
DJ Seagull: Um, but so, but it was like working with Kramer, it was like, fine this time? ’cause it seemed like he was kind of like, he kind of pushed Galaxie 500 apart, but this time it was just like, ’cause just the two of you,
Dean Wareham: I don’t think he pushed us apart. Whatever… there was, you know, the tension in that band, I don’t think it came from Kramer. Whenever we’re on a tour together, that always adds some. You’re traveling with people,
DJ Seagull: but it seemed like he started to grate, especially like in the interview, um, we did with Naomi. It seemed like she got kind of tired of him a little bit.
Dean Wareham: Well, they went on and made two other albums with him at the time. Right? Oh,
DJ Seagull : really?
Dean Wareham: After Galaxie 500. They did. Yeah. I think they did two records with him and yes, there was a part where we were on tour when they got tired of him getting, getting on stage with, yeah, he used to get on stage with us to play a few songs and I think yeah, on that final European tour, they were like, we don’t think Kramer should get on stage with us anymore. And told him that, but then we played the Glastonbury Festival and he was those who there doing our sound, 30,000 people, the sound booths a long way, away. And we’re out there on stage and I tell about he couldn’t resist. He had to get on the stage with us…
DJ Seagull: Well also it was like a three piece band. You might wanna add, you know, another guitar to like make the sound bigger.
Dean Wareham: Yes. It does. I mean, the thing is, it was a three, we were a three piece band live, but on record, it’s always, every song has at least two guitar tracks on it. It does fill it out a little, especially when I’m playing a solo. It’s like the bottom doesn’t drop out of the song,
DJ Seagull: But now he gets to live his dream. Now he’s on the album. Yeah?
Dean Wareham: Well he was on those albums too, and it in some ways. But yeah, it was pretty cool to, you know, after 34 years now, I could do another one together.
DJ Seagull: Yes. Are you planning on doing another album?
Dean Wareham: I, I get, I imagine I’ll probably make another album.
DJ Seagull: Mm-hmm. With Kramer specifically.
Dean Wareham: Oh. With Kramer? I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’m just touring this one now. Yeah.
DJ Seagull: You don’t like write stuff when you’re on tour?
Dean Wareham: No, there’s no time. It’s like barely time to like lie down for, for 20 minutes. At least the way we tour, it’s just go, go, go. The only time I write songs is when, if I’ve, uh, made an appointment in a studio.
DJ Seagull: You just write them on site and then record them?
Dean Wareham: Well, no, I don’t write them on site. I, I, you know, I start, but just like I’m saying, if I Oh, if you have a
DJ Seagull: Deadline?
Dean Wareham: Yeah and I’m Like, okay, I, now it’s time to write some songs, but I’m not writing, I don’t write songs, so all year long.
DJ Seagull: Do you have like other artistic things that you’re doing or just hobbies that you’re doing besides music because you, are you even in like movies and stuff too?
Dean Wareham: Well, you know, the only person who casts me in movies to act is, is Noah Baumbach. He has a new movie coming out. I think, I think I’m in it, I think I have a couple a, a line or two. I play, I’m playing an actor, it’s a movie with um, George Clooney and Adam Sandler. So they were both in the scene too, but I didn’t actually interact with either of them. I think George Clooney’s like behind me somewhere in the shot and. Um, what else do I do? I don’t know. I’m just, as artists, we’re pretty busy in things that are not music.
DJ Seagull: Yeah.
Dean Wareham: You know, like being a travel agent or just administrative stuff. And actually, and I’m, you know, I was running my own label with Britta Double Feature Records for, and so this record came out on Car Park records and I’m very happy about that. ’cause that’s just like. That’s just kind of a, a weight lifted. They just, they, they know what they’re doing in a way that, I don’t know what, and just have someone else do a lot of that work is nice, but you know, we’re all, especially when an album is out, more social media stuff than ever. And so much of the press that we do, I mean, this is nice. This is just an interview. All I have to do is talk to, you have to do any homework for this, but some of, some of the things there were like. Hey, can Dean write something about this or write, you know, give us a playlist and write a paragraph about each song. And that’s kind of the way it is, I guess, that nobody wants to pay anyone. How can we get the artist to create content for us? And anyway, I, I shouldn’t complain. It’s nice that people care.
DJ Seagull: Well, the playlist ones are really always really interesting. You know, see what people you, you listen to are listening to.
Dean Wareham: Okay, good. Well that’s good to know.
DJ Seagull: Yeah. But like, what else do they make you write about?
Dean Wareham: My own songs. So it’s always like, so now it’s like, like for the record, so you gotta like think of something to say about each song. And some songs, there’s something interesting to say about. And some songs, there really isn’t anything very interesting to say, but some songs, there really is a story behind themselves. I guess it’s a good exercise where the songs come from and often when you, often there’s a, there’s a song behind a song, you know, lifted the chord progression from someone else or, or taken the idea from a book or, that’s what I do anyway.
DJ Seagull: Are you thinking of any song specifically on this album when you’re talking about that?
Dean Wareham: I, we could say like the song Bourgeois Manque on this record. That phrase, bourgeois manque. When I was in, in German class in high school, I read this story of Tonio Kroger by, it’s is the name of the story. It’s by Thomas Mann. It’s an early story of his, and it’s about this writer who goes back to his hometown and they want to arrest him anyway. And he is talking to his friend about how he’s and his friend says him, well, you know what? You are, you’re a, you’re a bourgeois manque. So I, I, uh. Thought that was a good phrase to write a song about. But then I started delving into it and I’m really like, actually she doesn’t call in the German, she doesn’t call him that at all. But for some reason it’s a French phrase, put it the English translation. But I wrote a song called Bourgeois Manque based on a note taken, you know, like 40 years ago. But then, um. The song itself, I’m sort of, well, I referenced the, the horror unfolding in, in Gaza, but that’s a song where actually going into the studio, I was like, this, I don’t think this is a very good song at all. There’s nothing here. I’m just, I’m just like talking over two chords, going back and forth. But um, when we started playing it in the studio, it sounded really good. Kramer did a great job on that one.
DJ Seagull: And I think this is one of the interview questionnaire things that you were talking about. Um, but I read that you said you like to work with Cat Power.
Dean Wareham: Well, she’s a great singer. You know, she’s just one of those singers who could make anything sound good.
DJ Seagull: Yeah.
Dean Wareham: Like Nina Simone or, or Johnny Cash, whatever.
DJ Seagull: mm-hmm. And you do, you guys both do kind of like similar type of covers too.
Dean Wareham: I think you’re right. We sort of like slow them down or strip things out of them or, but.
She’s a, she’s, she was a Galaxie 500 fan. I’ve met her a few times over the years.
DJ Seagull: I mean, who isn’t a Galaxie 500 fan though?
Dean Wareham: Yeah. Right. Some people aren’t. Some people hate Galaxie 500. That’s okay. It’s not for them.
DJ Seagull: The video for That’s The Price of Loving Me. You like, kind of do like date stuff by yourself. Did it feel a little awkward to film that, like to be in a, in the swan boat by yourself?
Dean Wareham: Well, it was funny ’cause I went with the, the, the director. It was just the two of us. There’s no crew. It’s just him with this high 8 camera that kind of makes it look kind of flat, like digital nineties. Cheap looking. When we went to rent the swan boat, and I live near that park, and see people out there in the Swan Swan boat, the paddle boats, and I’ve never been. Anyway, we walked up to the, to rent a boat and we’re like, ’cause we, he had to be in a different boat shooting me, but we didn’t have a license to film. So anyway, the guys like, we were like, we want our own boats. And he was like, well it’s usually two people just go in one boat. It’s a lot easier to paddle. And we’re like, no, we run our own individual boats. Everyone in LA probably expects you to like pay if you, if you wanna shoot out here, you gotta pay. Yeah. It turned out, turned out kind of nice. I was like, let’s just shoot me um, eating a cheeseburger at this place, Patra Burger, which is now, it was just up the street on Sunset Boulevard and then, and the day after we shot, they closed it. It’s gone forever. And I just drove by there yesterday and already they’ve demolished it and they’re putting up something new. People are upset. Patra Burger is gone!
DJ Seagull : Well, you’ve immortalized it in your video now.
Dean Wareham: Yeah. It was a cheap burger.
DJ Seagull : Well, I did a lot of research in your, in the book you wrote and you wrote a, this almost 17 years ago, you wrote that book, Black Postcards. Is there anything you’d change about it, um, specifically like the opinions you put about other musicians, which I found very entertaining, but would you like change anything about it now?
Dean Wareham: You mean musicians I insulted?
DJ Seagull: Yeah, it’s, yeah, some of them.
Dean Wareham: I guess there’s a few, there’s a few things I would change I’m sure I, I don’t know. I haven’t looked at it in a while. I’m sure there’s a lot, but I don’t get to change it. So,
DJ Seagull: yeah.
Dean Wareham: So that’s it. Um, yeah, there’s a few things I would, I think what I learned is if you’re going to, um, say something slightly insulting about someone, they may, then you should change their name.
DJ Seagull: Did people like write to you and complain?
Dean Wareham: A couple of people did. And I was like, well, did you read the book? Did you see what I said about myself? Because I, I think I was harder on myself than it wasn’t anybody else. Oh, well.
DJ Seagull : you did say some nice things too, like you said you, your favorite or the best, uh, Seattle band was the Screaming Trees, which is the objectively right opinion to have about Seattle bands.
Dean Wareham: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I don’t know. I was probably like mean about like Billy Corgan and Eddie Vetter. I’m sorry. I’m sure Eddie Vetter is a nice guy. Billy Corgan is not a nice guy.
DJ Seagull: Do you think that you’re a fox or a hedgehog?
Dean Wareham: Um, I’m a hedgehog. Yeah.
DJ Seagull: Yeah?
Dean Wareham: Definitely a hedgehog. I’m not, uh, I’m not that versatile. I’m pretty, uh, limited. I’ve got like, sort of the one area that I burrow into. Like a hedgehog. Yeah, definitely a hedgehog.
DJ Seagull: it real fast too. Have you thought about it before?
Dean Wareham: Um, I just think it’s obvious
DJ Seagull: you are not trying to hide it.
Dean Wareham: No. Okay.
DJ Seagull: Well thank you so much for agreeing to, um, talk.
Dean Wareham: Oh, sure.
DJ Seagull : Do you have advice for students during finals season?
Dean Wareham: Take the test, just do it. Uh, I don’t know. I remember a couple of times when, when I was in college, I think every year I, like, I called in sick for a final and then you gotta go back and do it like in October, which really sucks. And like, I wish I hadn’t done that. That was… But I remember the last time I went into the, to the university health services to say, look, oh, I’ve got a really bad stomach bug. And I could hear the doctor in the next office saying, look, there’s a definite pattern here. I don’t even wanna talk to you this time.
DJ Seagull: That worked in college to say you had a stomach ache and then you got outta stuff?
Dean Wareham: Yeah. They didn’t want to fail you.
DJ Seagull: Consolation for the students here.
Dean Wareham: Uh uh. Yeah. They don’t want to fail you. It’s true. I can think of one exam I took, like my computer science class. I was certain that I failed it, but somehow I just, I got a D. And D is a pass, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s uh, what they say, below C level.
DJ Seagull: Okay. Well, thank you so much for talking to me. You are playing in San Francisco at the Chapel on the 17th of May.
Dean Wareham: Yes.
DJ Seagull: Have a new album out called That’s The Price of Loving Me and I wanna thank the KALX interview Department and Rare Earth who sent me his interview very last minute. I asked for the copy of the Naomi Yang interview and they sent it. So thank you so much.
Dean Wareham: Come to the show please!
Hi, this is Dean Wareham and you are listening to KALX Berkeley.
